No dreams tonight.
I woke up this morning to see Sam finish packing up his bag for our trip. He had packed two bags, one for each of us. I noticed the one he wasn't wearing looked more like a Fanny pack, but made to be worn like a messenger bag or satchel. It looked kinda goofy, to be honest.
"Good morning Eva!" Sam said to me cheerfully, apparently excited for the day. "How'd you sleep?"
"Ugh." The groan escaped my mouth. "I hate mornings." I groggily got up out of my blankets and stretched. "Why do we gotta get up again?"
"The Relick stone!" Sam exclaimed. "And Team Rockets tunnel! You saw it in the book, remember?"
"Oh yeah..." I said back, vaguely remembering the library book as I looked around, eyes half open. "Where is it anyway?"
"I put the book in my bag," Sam said, patting his leather messaged bag like it was safe and sound. "I thought we might need it on the trip."
"Don't we have to return it?"
"Only when we're done! What, did you think that many Pokémon want to read books in this town? I'm like, one of the only ones who read here!"
"Yeah, kinda. I mean, what else do you do for fun?"
"Well, some Pokémon like to train and fight with others... and some do other things, like sell merchandise! I on the other hand, am a great explorer!" He stood up, proudly.
"But you've never really gone out to explore much, haven't you?"
"W-what do you mean?"
"You packed your bag too full."
I pointed over to his over-stuffed bag. The bottom of it was torn, spilling books and items all over the ground underneath it.
"Ack!" He said, dropping the bag and picking up the books. "Alright alright, you got me. I'm not an explorer... yet. I've always dreamed of going out and discovering the unknown and the impossible... I'm just a bit of a scaredy-cat..."
"That's all right," I said, patting him on the back. "I'll be here to help!"
"Really? You'll stick with me?"
"Of course."
"Thanks."
"Now, let's repack some stuff."
We repacked the bags with food, helpful items, the old book, and a few extra items. The small strap one ended up being for me, and Sam pulled out a new satchel bag for himself. Pretty soon, we were on the way out of the house.
Once we left the house and Sam was going to block the door, I remembered the chest from the far room. "Oh wait! I forgot something!" I said, thinking to just run in for a quick second to see what was inside the chest.
"Oh yeah!" Sam said. "Me too!"
We both went back inside. Sam was headed over to the far room. (Oh crap!) I thought to myself. (If he's going in there, maybe he's going to take it out of the chest!)
I watched Sam as he went over behind the curtain. I could see him through the curtain, opening the chest and putting something into his bag, but his body was in the way, so I couldn't see what it was. I quickly grabbed the Agility-up scarf and made my way outside.
Once Sam made it out and covered the entrance, we started heading to the main road.
"What'd you forget?" I asked Sam, quietly wondering what was so secret of his to not ward a story from this talkative salamander.
"Oh, uhh..." Sam started. "J-just a... personal memento... something special to me." I could tell I wasn't going to get much more from him on that. "What about you?"
"Oh, um... this agility-up scarf!" I said, holding it up. "I noticed that you didn't pack it, and I was thinking that it might be useful for the trip!"
"Oh, smart."
"Thanks."
The rest of the trip to the main road lasted in mostly silence.
Once we got to the main road, Sam pulled out a map of the area.
"Alright." Sam said, his claw tracing over the lines on the map. "We're right here. Team rocket tunnel should be right around here." He pointed at a spot north of where we were, which he had circled in blue. "If we follow the main path north," he gestured along the path in the opposite direction from Tarry town, "then we should get there in maybe a week or two."
"Wait, A WEEK OR TWO?!!?!!!" I hollered. "How far away is that??!!! Don't you guys have buses, or taxis, or even trains or something?!!"
Sam shrunk back. "I-I-don't know what any of those are, b-but unless you have a better way to travel, we'll have to walk..."
"Fine, fine. I'll walk." I muttered, hoping that this Pokémon body wouldn't get worn out too fast. "At least we have you as a mobile campfire."
——————————-
After we started walking for a while, I started to wonder about certain things. Where did Pokémon come from? I mean, you know where babies come from, along with chickens, and other things in the human world, but do Pokémon come from eggs, or what? I mean, not wearing clothes is fine for them, most of the ones I've seen have fur, but what about the one who don't have fur? Do they even use the bathroom? Come to think of it, not one have I seen Sam have to step aside to take a wiz... come to think of it, I haven't either!
Maybe that's why I don't work up a sweat so fast... maybe these Pokémon bodies are designed way more efficiently than human ones? I mean, it makes sense? If we use up 100% of the stuff we eat as Pokémon rather than humans, we would never need to go to the bathroom, or anything! We would just need to not eat for longer! I guess same thing with water! Wow, talk about a perfect way to not have to diet!
Thinking of humans... how am I going to get home? I mean, Arceus didn't say to not try to go home. He just said that I had a purpose here, and that I was important, but not that I couldn't go home. But then the book said that I shouldn't plan on going home... or at least that's the feeling it gave me.
I sighed. If I shouldn't plan on going home, then why am I doing all of this? I mean, my first reaction to being a Pokémon was to run and hide from it! Am I really cut out to be some sort of hero? And why can't I talk normally? What's up with that? If Arceus wanted me to succeed, why has he hindered me with all this crap, and why did he even choose me?!!
I was in the midst of all these angry thoughts, when Sam spotted something moving up ahead. He was walking in front of me, so he probably didn't even notice my thought-filled scowl.
"Hey, what's that?!!" Sam said, running up to the shape in the distance. I followed after him.
When we came up to it, we found it was a giant butterfly! No, I'm not kidding. I giant butterfly. Now I've seen everything. The giant guy was fluttering back and forth as if deep in thought.
"Hello!" Sam spoke up to the butterfly. Are you okay?"
"Hmm?!" The butterfly said in a masculine voice. I was so shocked that it was a guy, I didn't even register the southern-like accent! "Oh yes, yes!! Finally some luck rolling my way!" He floated closer to us. "Have either of you two seen a little caterpie anywhere around here?"
We both shook our heads.
"Blast!" The butterfly swore. "Mama butterfree leaves me alone with our son for one minute, and zoom! He's already disappeared!"
"So you're looking for your lost son caterpie?" Sam asked.
"Yes. He was playing on the path over here, next to these woods."
"Sir," Sam said with a gulp. "Aren't these the woods with a mystery dungeon in them?"
"Oh no. Are they? Well that explains why he's not responding to my calling! What am I gonna do? My wife would flip if she couldn't find either of us!"
Sam then stood up a little taller. "We'll look for him! I know it's not a very big mystery dungeon, only four floors! We'll find him and be right out before your wife even shows up!"
"Will you? That'd be perfect! Thank you!"
Sam started heading right into the woods. "Sam!" I called out to him, catching up. "What the heck are we doing?!! I thought we were going to the cave!"
"We can still go there!" Sam reassured me. "We'll just find him real quick, and be on our way!"
"Sam..." I said, slightly irritated. "Do you know what we're doing?"
"Y-yes, of course!" Sam stuttered. "I know all about mystery dungeons! I've read everything there is to know about them!"
"Sam, what even is-" I said as I suddenly became disoriented. I felt like my stomach did a flip and was still recovering from it as I reorientated myself again. The woods looked different now. There seemed to be walls around us, making rooms and hallways, but I couldn't figure out if they were made of trees or if they were just walls of bark with leaves on them.
"This-" Sam said. "Is a mystery dungeon. Mystery dungeons are strange places where the laws of space don't quite make sense." He stated, likely quoting from some book he read. "They sometimes have items littered about, and their layout changes every time you enter. But the weirdest thing about them are their inhabitants, ferals."
"Ferals?" I repeated, remembering that others associated me with them. "What are ferals?"
Sam started leading the way across the room towards the first hallway. "Ferals," he continued with his know-it-all look about him. "-are Pokémon who live inside mystery dungeons, and they are all impulse and no logic. They are theorized to be Pokémon trapped in mystery dungeons, who over time have lost their minds and memories, and have become carnal and territorial."
"Oh... wait, where does that place me?"
"Well, there's another strange thing that can happen to ferals. If one beats them or encourages them hard enough, sometimes they can become... 'impressed' by that Pokémon. They then start to follow them and learn from them, as if they were their alpha or master. They will literally follow them to the ends of the earth."
"Huh..." I thought aloud. "So people think I'm a feral because of the way I talk?"
"Well that... and the way you look at things and walk. You act like everything is new to you."
"That's because it is! I'm a human... remember?"
"Yeah, but they don't know that."
"Right."
We continued on for another minute or two before I decided to speak up again.
"So, you said something about this place having four floors? What did you mean by that?"
"Well, the way you move forward in a mystery dungeon is by looking for the stairs, then climbing them either up or down, then when you get to the end, you are where you need to be!" He said simply.
"So... stairs? As in like a building stairs?"
"Yeah, they are made of gray stone. Impossible to miss."
"O-kay."
We rounded a corner and sure enough, there were a set of large stone steps that went up to nothing. Sam brought me over to them.
"Now, when we travel up to another floor, we have to do it quickly." He said, looking straight at me. "The floors change quickly, so when one of us goes, we should follow fast so that we don't end up on different versions of the next floor. Got it?"
"Uh... yeah."
Sam then went up the stairs and I followed. Then there was that stomach-churning feeling again, and we ended up on another floor that looked similar to the first, but had a different layout.
I looked back at where we came from. Or, at least I tried to. The stairs we had come up were now gone! I looked all around, frantic.
"Oh, I forgot to mention...." Sam said, seeing my confusion. "Once you enter a mystery dungeon, there are only two ways out. One, you faint and the dungeon takes half of your stuff and kicks you out, or two, you finish through the dungeon and get to where you are trying to go."
"Yeah I don't want to faint and get kicked out." I said after thinking about the way the dungeon treated my stomach already.
"I don't blame you." Sam said, rubbing his belly. "I don't want to either.
We travelled though this floor also, Sam found an apple and a berry (they are huge here!) On the ground and put them in his bag. I asked him if they were okay to eat, he looked at them and said "should be." This world sure is weird.
On the third floor, we ran into our first feral.
"Alright, be still." Sam said, watching the 'pidgey' bird as it stared at me. "It doesn't look like it's going to attack until you move first. I'm gonna sneak around..."
Sam was going to sneak around spit fire at it (I assume) but then it must've seen him in the corner of its eye, because it spun around and started pecking at him. That thing was fast!
"Aughhh!!" Ow! Ow! Ow! Eva! Help!" Sam called out to me.
I shook myself out of shock and raced over. I started batting at the bird, trying to get it off of Sam. Fighting on four legs is harder that it looks, okay! I eventually pushed the bird Pokémon off of Sam, and it started pecking and scratching at me! I tried to run, but it was right after me, trying to grab onto my back!
"San! Sam! Help! Help!" I hollered.
"Uhh, Uhh, hold on!"
"Help! Me! Please!"
"Get ready to duck! Sam yelled.
What the heck could he be thinking- YOU KNOW WHAT I DONT CARE BECAUSE A BIRD IS CHASING ME!!!!!!
"Ready..." Sam said as I was racing closer. "DUCK!"
I immediately ducked my head and body down as low as I could as I saw LITERAL PIECES OF FIRE FLY OVER MY HEAD! The pidgey fell to the ground with a sizzle, down for the count. I looked over at Sam, who looked relieved that he didn't set his friend on fire.
I walked over to him. "You can breathe FIRE?!!!" Since when?!!"
"Uh... it was only ember... I'm not even that good at it..."
"But still, YOU BREATHED FIRE!!! That's awesome!!!"
Sam blushed as he put his hand behind his head. "Yeah, I guess" he said with a smile.
I looked back at the Pidgey. "Is it... dead?"
"Nah, I didn't get it too bad... probably just knocked out."
We both stared at it and then looked at each other.
"We should go before it wakes up." I said.
"Good idea." Sam quickly added as we left.
——————————-
At last we found the stairs. We headed up to find the last floor was an empty clearing. There were a few paths around the edges, but no more walls it seemed.
"Are we...?" I started.
"Yeah, we're out of the dungeon." Sam replied, looking around for the caterpie. "We are at the center of Tiny woods. There should be a Caterpie somewhere around here..."
"So if a caterpie is a young butterfree..." I said, starting to put two and two together. "Then it's like a caterpillar?"
"Uh, I don't know what a caterpillar is, but probably."
I joined Sam in searching for the caterpie. I assumed it would be larger than expected (like every other Pokémon I've seen here), but as we looked, it didn't seem like it could be anywhere! "How big is a carerpie?" I asked Sam.
"Uhh... about a foot tall?"
"Kay." I said looking some more.
...
"And a foot is twelve inches here, right?"
"Um, yes?"
"And inches are about this big, right?" I asked again, making the space of an inch with my paws as best I could.
"Yes. Definitely." Sam said, looking like he felt a little awkward that I was asking such basic questions. "Gosh, you really are from another world..." he said quietly to himself.
We kept looking, and I was starting to worry that this was taking too long, when I heard a slight shuffle from one of the trees. I looked over to see nothing out of the ordinary. I looked closer at the bark, and found a small, sticky string pressed up against the wood.
"Hey Sam!" I called. "Come look at this!"
Sam hurried over and peered at the string. "That must've been from Caterpie using string shot!" He said, scratching his head. "But then where is he?"
"...Up here."
We looked up to find a green thing in the tree, hanging off a branch like a leaf. It was shaped kinda like a banana or a crescent moon, but as if it had a pointed nose and face on the inside, and was slightly misshapen.
"Caterpie!" Sam exclamed. "You're a Metapod!"
Now I was even more confused. "A Meta-what?!"
"I'll tell you later." Sam said, dismissing my confusion for now. "Let's get you down from there!" He looked for a handhold on the tree to grasp onto.
"I think I can..." the strange moon-face thing started. We heard a creak from the tree branch. "Uh oh."
The branch snapped under the thing's weight, hurtling the thing and the branch down to land on top of me.
Fwump!
"Ouch!" I cried in pain. It hurt, but I didn't think I had broken anything. I looked over to find the green thing had fallen gently onto my back.
"Good thing you have fur!" Sam said, rushing over to help me. "That could've been bad."
"Sorry!" The creature said to me with an apologetic expression. "I was being chased by some Pidgey and Spearow, and I decided to hide in the tree! Then this happened!"
"It's all right." I said, getting up. "Just glad that you're safe now." I assumed something about this was normal. "Let's get you back to your dad."
We brought the 'Metapod' out of the forest and back to the main road. I was glad, because I felt we were in that forest far too long! We found 'Daddy Butterfree' and handed the green guy back to him.
"Thank you, thank you! I am so glad you found him! The wrath of my wife is not something to be dealt with! And with this great news, I'm sure it will be far easier to handle when she inevitably finds out what happens! Thank you kindly!"
"It's all right!" Sam said, hand behind his head again. "I wouldn't have felt good if we just left him there, knowing that we could've helped out!"
"I say, stay right there! I've got something for you!" The butterfree pulled out a couple items. "Here is a tiny reviver seed, and a pecha berry! Sorry it's not much, but if you're ever in need, let us know and we'll be on our way over to help ya!"
"Oh, no no. It's alright! Besides, we're on our way towards Capkim town!" Sam said, trying to dissuade Daddy Butterfree.
"Nah, I insist!" He replied, practically forcing the items into our paws. "And we've got relatives there! If you need any help, ask for the Bagon Gang!"
The Butterfree started fluttering away.
"Well, that was... an interesting experience." I said, looking over at Sam. "So what happened to Caterpie?"
"Oh! Right! He must've evolved."
"Evolved? Like, he looked different before?" I watched as they left down the road to tell the mother. "I guess that makes sense for a butterfly family?"
"Uhh." Sam started. "Evolution doesn't just happen to the their species... it happens for yours and mine too."
"Wait. You mean to tell me that we suddenly change like that?!!! Like, one minute we are fine, and the next we are in a cocoon?!!!"
"No, no!" Sam exclamed. "Well, not exactly. You have many different ways you can evolve as an Eevee! Not of which involves cocoons! I as a Charmander, well I just get bigger and more like a dragon."
"Well, that's a relief!" I said, mentally wiping the imaginary sweat off my forehead. "I thought I'd grow fins or gills or something crazy!"
"Anyways!" He said, changing the subject as we started walking. "I think we should have a team name! Something to be known by! What do you think?"
"I mean, I guess? Are we forming a partnership or something?"
"Sure!" Sam was eager and happy about this. I knew he was committed to becoming a team, so I decided to have some fun with him.
"Nah." I said. "Let's not make a team."
"Yeah- wait, WHAT?!??!!!!" Sam shattered. "B-b-but w-what about what Arceus said?!! About staying together?!!!!"
"Nah, he couldn't be serious. I mean, he's your God right? He should know I'm the lone and solo type."
"But- you need me I thought-"
"Nah. Not really. I can figure stuff out."
"But-but-but-" Sam was now frantically looking, searching, trying to come up with a more convincing response for me. He had tears in his eyes.
It was at this point I realized that he thought I was serious. Did he not get the joke?
I turned back towards him. "Sam-" I placed a paw on his shoulder. "I'm just kidding with you. Of course I need you. You're basically my guide-map here! I'll be on your team, just know that I'm not trying to be mean to you when I joke like that."
Sam sniffled, wiping the tears out of his eyes. "Th-thanks." He said. "I'm-I'm-I'm sorry... I thought you were j-just going to abandon me..."
"No, you're a great person Sam. I would never abandon you!"
We stood there for a few more minutes while he pulled himself together.
"Well," I said calmly with a slight smile. "What kind of team names were you thinking of?"
Author's note:
Hey guys! Thanks for those who left me feedback on this story! I am always happy to hear your thoughts and feelings about this story!- They inspire me to keep going, despite my uneasiness in being a fairly new writer.
I decided to end this chapter here for two major reasons. One, because it was getting long, and two, because I can't think of a decent team name for the life of me! So I thought "might as well let the readers decide/help me!" So there you have it! The best team name mentioned to me before I release chapter five will be the team name! (If I can't find a good one, I'll use what I get as inspiration!)
You guys are influencing the story now! I also want to tell you the avenues of which you can message me:
Twitter: @Pokealec1999
YouTube: The Emerald Bow-Tie (use latest video)
Reddit: u/Char_TeamEmber
FanFiction or Wattpad: story comments section.
If you know me personally, please message me directly. That will make things easier to manage.
Thanks again for reading! I've got a lot more down the shoot, but I don't know if it's any good unless people tell me! I am going to try my hardest to keep this story going! Thank you, and stay safe out there!
-Alexander